On this day: July 19

2014: Actor James Garner, best known for his TV work in "Maverick" and "The Rockford Files" and for movies such as "The Great Escape," "Victor Victoria" and "Murphy's Romance," dies of a heart attack at age 86 in Los Angeles, California.

2009: Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Frank McCourt, best known as the author of the memoir "Angela's Ashes," dies from melanoma at age 78 in New York City.

2005: President George W. Bush announces his choice of federal appeals court judge John Roberts to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

1996: The Summer Olympics open in Atlanta, Georgia, with boxing great Muhammad Ali lighting the cauldron.

1994: A game is canceled at the Seattle Kingdome for the first time ever, due to falling tiles from the dome's roof.

1990: Cincinnati Red Pete Rose is sentenced to five months in prison for tax evasion after pleading guilty to two charges of filing false income tax returns not showing income he received from selling autographs and memorabilia, and from horse racing winnings.

1989: United Airlines flight 232 crashes in Sioux City, Iowa, after suffering catastrophic failure of its tail-mounted engine, killing 111 of the 296 passengers. The passenger jet is seen here in a photo from the National Transportation Safety Board report, with damage highlighted.

1985: Christa McAuliffe of New Hampshire is chosen to be the first schoolteacher to ride aboard the space shuttle. She would ultimately die with six others when the Challenger exploded the following year.

1982: Actor Jared Padalecki, best known for his roles on the TV series "Gilmore Girls" and "Supernatural," is born in San Antonio, Texas.

1980: The Summer Olympics opens in Moscow, with the U.S. and other countries boycotting because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

1980: "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me" becomes Billy Joel's first No. 1 hit. It would stay on top of the chart for two weeks and be followed by two more No. 1 hits so far in Joel's career (1983's "Tell Her About It" and 1989's "We Didn't Start the Fire").

1976: Rock group Deep Purple officially announces it has disbanded.

1976: Actor Benedict Cumberbatch, the star of the TV series "Sherlock," the BBC's contemporary adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories, is born in London, England. He is also known for his roles in movies such as "Atonement," "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," "War Horse," "Star Trek Into Darkness," "12 Years a Slave" and "The Imitation Game," the last of which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

1975: Country music singer-songwriter and musician Lefty Frizzell, known for hit songs such as "Always Late (With Your Kisses)," "Long Black Veil," "Saginaw, Michigan" and "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time," dies at the age of 47 after a massive stroke.

1971: Ukrainian boxer and politician Vitali Klitschko (right), a former WBC, WBO and The Ring magazine heavyweight champion, is born in Belovodsk, Kirghiz SSR, Soviet Union. Klitschko compiled a career record of 45-2, with 41 of his wins coming by knockout. He holds the second best knockout-to-fight ratio of any champion in heavyweight boxing history, after Rocky Marciano, and is the eighth longest reigning heavyweight champion of all time. He officially launched a political career in 2006 and was elected mayor of Kiev, Ukraine, in May 2014. His younger brother, Wladimir Klitschko (left), is the longest reigning IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight champion in history with the most title defenses for those organizations. Together they held every major heavyweight championship belt before Vitali's retirement in 2012.

1963: Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 347,800 feet on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 kilometers, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention, making Walker the first American civilian to make any spaceflight. He's seen here in 1958 before an earlier test flight.

1962: Actor Anthony Edwards, known for his roles on the TV series "ER" and in the movies "Revenge of the Nerds" and "Top Gun," is born in Santa Barbara, California.

1961: TWA becomes the first airline to introduce regular in-flight movies aboard its aircraft, offering "By Love Possessed," starring Lana Turner and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., in the first-class section of a Boeing 707 during a scheduled flight from New York City to Los Angeles.

1954: Elvis Presley's first single is released by Sun Records. It was "That's All Right" with the B-side of "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

1946: Soon-to-be movie star Marilyn Monroe, then still known as Norma Jeane Dougherty, acts in her first screen test for 20th Century Fox executive Ben Lyon.

1922: George McGovern, a staunch liberal who served South Dakota in the U.S. Senate and House for more than two decades and who ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1972, is born in Avon, South Dakota. McGovern, a decorated World War II pilot who also became known for his outspoken opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, died at age 90 on Oct. 21, 2012.

1910: Cy Young becomes the first -- and only -- pitcher to ever win 500 games, tossing an 11-inning victory over the Washington Senators. He would tack on 11 more victories before retiring after the 1911 season with a 511-316 record.

1909: The first unassisted triple play in major-league baseball is made by Cleveland Indians shortstop Neal Ball in a game against Boston.

1903: Maurice Garin wins the first Tour de France bicycle race after six stages covering 1,509 miles and 19 days. Garin, who's seen here right of center with his arms crossed, would also win the second Tour de France, but was stripped of his title, along with eight others, for cheating.

1883: Animator Max Fleischer, who brought such animated characters as Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman to the movie screen, is born in in Kraków, Poland, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian province of Galicia.

1881: Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull surrenders to federal troops.

1879: Legendary gunfighter Doc Holliday kills for the first time, after a dispute with a gunman at his Las Vegas, New Mexico, saloon. The details of the shooting vary, but Holliday was eventually acquitted in the killing.

1860: Lizzie Borden, who will famously be accused in rhyme of giving her mother "40 whacks" with an axe, is born in Fall River, Massachusetts. Borden was tried and acquitted in the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother.

1843: The steamship SS Great Britain is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and also becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.

1834: French painter Edgar Degas, regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, is born in Paris.

1814: Samuel Colt, the firearms inventor who made the mass-production of the revolver commercially viable for the first time, is born in Hartford, Connecticut.

1692: Five women are executed by hanging after being found guilty of witchcraft during the Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials.

1553: Fifteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey is deposed as queen of England after claiming the crown for nine days. Mary, the daughter of King Henry VIII, was proclaimed queen in her place.

1545: The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth, England. In 1982 the wreck was salvaged in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.

1543: Mary Boleyn, the sister of English queen consort Anne Boleyn who was also one of King Henry VIII's mistresses, dies in her early 40s. It has been rumoured that she bore two of the king's children, though Henry did not acknowledge either of them.

A.D. 64: A fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control in what became known as the Great Fire of Rome. According to a popular, but untrue legend, Nero fiddled as the city burned.

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